hack your brain!, page
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Topic started on 19-4-2011 @ 12:30 PM by emptyOmind
i'm sure some of you are aware of brain hacks. i'll share a few of my own personal favorites with you.

if you feel nervous, one way to change your thinking is to take a small object and toss it back and forth from hand to hand, supposedly when people feel nervous or panicked its because there brain is locked into that state and supposedly this unlocks it, i dunno about the science behind this but it has worked for me

another is if you feel emotionally unbalanced, whatever the cause, be it stress, anger etc. you can do something that involves logic, such as solving math problems, or playing a game of chess this will switch your brain from its emotional state to its logical state, supposedly its impossible to sustain bad feelings when you do something that is strictly logical

the last is my personal favorite, it involves a bit of psychology (i hope ya'll don't mind). basically this one takes some time, but it's definitely worth it. it's a trick to cure nervousness, stage fright, fear and unconfidence etc. what you do is whenever you feel good, or basically the opposite of the feeling you want to avoid, you associate it with a unique gesture. for example if you are unconfident, whenever you feel good and confident do something that's not a normal body gesture, like wrapping your index finger and your thumb around your wrist (just an example, but you can use this one), and repeat this every time you feel confident. then when the time comes and you have to face your fear, if you feel it creeping in, do your gesture and feelings of confidence as well as past memories of when you felt confident (those times when you did the gesture) will rush in. as i said this one takes a little time, but it's not hard to put into practice and it does work.

hope that ya'll liked these and will use them!

if you have any, please share! i would love to read them!


reply posted on 24-4-2011 @ 08:32 AM by Deranger
reply to post by emptyOmind



I like the sort of NLP/conditioning strategy you mention, easy enough, will sure try it for size. Could be handy if my other technique won't work.
My take on emotions is that they are the minds equivivalent to sensory input. When something touches the skin it gives a sensory response, when something touches the mind it gives a sensory response. In this way I try to cope with, say, anxiety by initially embrase it, accept it and properly identify the cause of the sensation. Once I've identified the cause I must then accept it's value to me. This is not always an easy task since it often means having to accept vulnerabilities, weaknesses or less flattering charachteristics of one´s person. But is has to be done. Stuff seldomly dissapear by ignoring them. They lay there, silently seeping whatever they are made of.
Once I've accepted the value of a particular thing I can then cut of the feeling that made me aware of it. Now I am aware and I know it's value.
I'm kind of certain most negative feelings stems from dissonance between what we wish and what we experience. At this stage of the process I'm left with something which I know has a negative impact on me. Here is when I start to rearrange what meaning/value I will let it have. Imagine that we all have compartments into which stuff autonomously get distributed in respect to previous experiences. Every compartment sets of a specific sensation to notify for example "hey, this experience you have with your co-worker just landed in the anxiety-bin", thus interaction with this person make you feel uneasy. Now imagine viewing ANYTHING as an entity. Absolutely nothing carries with it some kind of inherent meaning, a bottle doesn't radiate it's bottleness so that we may percieve it as a bottle. A bottle is to us what we've learned it is and our relation to it might be reflected in our experience of glass, shape of round things etc etc. The same goes with my experience with my co-worker, the interaction as an entity does not hold properties of it's own.
Now, knowing this I have the luxury of being able to rearrange in which bin I keep any given entity. Well, not any given, some # is f**kn heavy to move, but with the co-worker example I easily chuck it in the neutral-bin. Sure, he's still a dick and we don't get along, but it won't set off any feelings at all. I may then approach our interaction rationally and make the best of the situation without feelings of stress or whatnot.

Ultimately I wish to gain the mental presence as to really being able to choose the meaning of all things. Imagine breaking your arm really messy, bonepipes poking out, pain increasing as you watch your twitching fingers at the end of a suddenly new acquired limb in the middle of your forearm which lets the last part dangle in a 90 degree angle from the rest of the limb. Sounds start to become distanced and blurry, eyesight hazy, cold sticky sweat trickling out from every pore." Damn it hurts, and obviously I'm going into chock too. Now wait a minute! How about I go and redirect this sensation of pain into the reward-centre of my brain instead? Ye! There we go! Ah! What a terriffic pain! Great stuff! Now, off to the doctors to patch this mess up, can't be walking about with a bleeding arm flapping around all day."
That would be neat.


reply posted on 25-4-2011 @ 12:37 AM by korathin
reply to post by emptyOmind


Personally I prefer shifting my consciousness around. Like when I am tired or road conditions become really really scary I just flex the part of my brain right in the frontal lobe(almost as if to form a ball there). Or if my emotions act up I think I am flexing the brain muscles around the sides of the parietal,temporal lobes to the cerebellum(sets off a weird reaction that gives me goose bumps and calms me down+ has a weird after pulse from the bottom up of my brain). And if I need to focus because of a danger to my physical well being(like a conflict type threat where I need to enter into a more emotionless state, was very handy whenever I tried my hand at kendo) I think I am flexing the brain muscles around the areas where the Occipital, Parietal and temporal lobes meet(my frontal lobe feels empty when I do this enabling greater response).

granted I could be way off the mark, I am just judging where I feel the flexing and looking at a brain anatomy diagram...
edit on 25-4-2011 by korathin because: brain diagram I looked at was backwards duh! my bad

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